Page 27 of A Very Monstrous Desire

Theo saw his arm wound doing just that. The edges of the wound were starting to knit together, and the bleeding had stopped entirely. It wasn’t even painful anymore.

“The garwei would have eaten you quickly before your wounds closed over,” the monster continued with a shake of his head. “Though that does not always work. I have seen examples where the wounds are trying to close as the young try to eat through…”

“That is…” Theo shook his head. “That is horrifying.”

“Yes.” Baku paused. “Are you okay?”

“It’s nothing,” Theo said as his wound had closed now, as if it never existed.

“My people have developed an artificial version of the compound in that venom,” Baku continued. “But it does not work as well as the original.”

“On Earth we would just breed them and extract the venom at the source,” Theo admitted.

“Yes,” Baku said. “Your people are very flawed. It is why we considered long and hard on our current course of action. Now come, it is starting to get dark, and we are too close to the forest. We need to make it to the shelter.”

The forest loomed ahead of them though they continued to walk towards it, having completed whatever loop Baku planned. Baku kept Theo close, adjusting their positions whenever Theo moved slightly out of whatever range he considered acceptable, which was not much at all. It was like having a very over-sized shadow though Theo was not against it.

Another twenty minutes of walking and they found themselves at another of those shelters carved into the cliff edge. Theo looked around him nervously as they approached, as he didn’t fancy another pincer in the arm.

He got a bite instead.

This monster dropped down from the cliff above and latched onto Theo’s hand before sinking its fangs in. It was only a shallow bite, but it stung like hell and Theo yelped as he slapped the thing off and then stepped on it. It looked like an overly large spider, and he quickly saw there were others now racing down the cliff face and towards them in what looked like a stream of furry legs.

Theo shuddered.

He was not a fan of spiders. Especially not ones the size of his hand.

“What is it?” the monster demanded.

“I don’t know… I…”

Another spider landed on him. Theo slapped it away again.

“Come,” Baku said quickly as he too spotted the spiders and then quickly opened the entrance to the shelter. “Get inside.”

Theo moved, beyond keen to follow Baku into the shelter and away from the alien spiders, but he clearly did not move quickly enough, and Baku did not reach out quickly enough to grab him either.

A web shot out from above, surrounding Theo in a thick net of what seemed to be a silk-like substance. He yelled out as it closed around him and saw Baku turn through the opaque fabric, his moonlit eyes widening. He shouted something, Theo did not hear what, because a heartbeat later and he was lifted from his feet, the silken net closing around him as he was hiked into the air!

Theo’s stomach swooped as he was pulled up the cliff face and then along it. He tried to struggle free. He shifted and moved in the net even as the motion slammed him into the side of the cliff. He cried out as his left hip took the brunt of the impact, but it did create a small tear in the silk. Theo managed to get a partial elbow through it but the next thing he knew and several of the tiny spider monsters were filling the gap and closing it up. They worked so quickly patching up the hole with more of the silken substance, and Theo was so shocked by the action that he didn’t have time to stop it.

“Fuck!”

He shifted again to try to create another hole but as if sensing what he was up to, and maybe whatever was dragging him along the cliff really could do that, they sped up and moved across the cliff face at such speed that Theo could do nothing but curl up in the silken net and try to protect himself from the multiple impacts along the jagged rocks.

Eventually, though Theo had no idea how long it had taken, ten minutes, twenty even, Theo realised they were no longer on the cliff face but somewhere else. Whatever was dragging him along was leaping, jumping, moving…

A crackling.

A rustling.

Theo spun in his net for just a moment and then the next thing he knew, he was falling. He cried out but whatever had captured him slowed his descent before he hit the floor properly.

Theo recognised the scent immediately and it was almost like he had known where he was going to end up the moment he’d spun through the air.

It was a floor of mud, of crackling leaves, and of tiny biting creatures.

A canopy of branches and leaves, and bigger, swooping creatures.

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